Super Mario-creator Shigeru Miyamoto says Nintendo is "busy" working on a new title.

Some might accuse Nintendo of being a one trick pony. That's absurd, of course, because Nintendo has at least four or five tricks that we can think of just off the top of our head. Jokes aside, it's no secret that the house that Mario built is held up by some fairly consistent pillars. You have your Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, Donkey Kong and maybe a few others that rear their family friendly heads every few years. As consistent as these franchises are however, some might also consider them to on the stagnant side as well. You can only stomp on so many Goomba before the experience starts to lose its touch.

Perhaps, recognizing this Shigeru Miyamoto, the creative mind behind pretty much all things Nintendo, has revealed that the developer/publisher has a brand new franchise in the works. Speaking with Famitsu, Miyamoto offered the following while discussing upcoming Wii U games. "[Next spring] we'll have a general selection available, so I've been thinking it would be a good time to bring out a new franchise." When pressed for further details he would continue, "I can't say too much in detail right now, but I've been pretty busy with this title these days." It's not much to go off of. That said, considering the level to which Nintendo relies on established properties, a confirmation that the company is working on a new franchise is still pretty huge. The big question, of course, is what in the heck will it be?

They know how to make games, thats a fact (okay, an opinion, bu you know what I mean), so it really bugged me that whatever games they made were all about the same core experiences that were created 10 years ago (with some exceptions, although still conected to the original concept in some way).

They know how to make games, thats a fact (okay, an opinion, bu you know what I mean), so it really bugged me that whatever games they made were all about the same core experiences that were created 10 years ago (with some exceptions, although still conected to the original concept in some way).

Well, why change something that doesn't need to be changed? I greatly enjoyed the Nintendo Titles of the past few years. Animal Crossing New Leaf many would complain is the same old thing, but they changed many aspects of the core game that most people won't see instantly. Same with Skyward Sword and to a much lesser extent: New Super Mario Bros U.

Sure, they have flops like any other company (Metroid: Other M and New Super Mario Bros 2 for example) but they know how to make a fun, nearly bug free, game. Which is something I absolutely love from them.

They should try to bring new life to their current franchises as well. Of course people are going to say you're being repetitive when you don't evolve. Adding waggle and tablet gimmicks isn't evolution, it's distraction.

Good that they are starting admit what everyone has been saying for years. And considering they're properties tend towards the weird (an acid tripping plumber, a magical elf with a reincarnation theme, a tie-wearing gorilla, a space-bounty hunter etc...), I'm looking forward to seeing what they make.

Somehow I have a bad feeling about this. And I don't mean mr. Miamoto's plans, best of luck to him and may he have an inspiration at his side.

I think that this new game,for which Nintendo fans, that are tired of Mario, Zelda and other IPs, have asked for very long time, will not gain enough support from fans BECAUSE it is not a Mario or Zelda game.

Although, I hope not. I am more of a Sony/PC guy, but healthy competition is always good for all sides.

I can't help but think that a new franchise would have been something good to announce for the WiiU launch line-up. Now it looks more like they are trying to make something to save the WiiU rather than to just make something and be awesome. Hopefully it's something cool though.

All joking aside, I'm actually quite hopefull. Some, no, most of Nintendo's franchises have been rather fantastic until they were milked into dull, over-repetition. If we get another Mario Bros 64, or Wind Waker, or Metroid Prime with a new IP, then I'm happy.

What about all that IP you're just sitting on and are doing absolutely nothing with? There's a plethora of Nintendo titles that actually DO deserve sequels. What about a new Star Fox game (and I mean new not a remake)? What about a new F-Zero?

thing is EVERY company needs new franchises, but no one is commenting on that. Furthermore, has a LOT of new IPs....but of course a LOT of people handwave them as not counting because they're on the eShop, or they're on handhelds, or they look colorful or some other B.S. excuse. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what they've cooked up.

Seriously this good news in my book. A new face from Nintendo would be a bit of fresh air and mix up the new Zelda, Mario, Metroid cycle.

Because when Nintendo makes a new franchise you'll more than likely get something legitimately different as opposed to just a reskin of another franchise. People milk that tired, flawed, and easy-to-dismantle excuse of "Nintendo has no new franchises!", blissfully ignorant that A) Yes, Nintendo DOES make new franchises quite frequently such as Xenoblade, or Dillon's Rolling Western, or Pushmo, or Sakura Samurai, it's just that most people try to ignore those for arbitrary reasons. Like Miyamoto said, GAMEPLAY makes a new series, not characters or a name. A new franchise has to be LEGITIMATELY new, not just a reskin.

Hmm....Interesting...A new first party "franchise" and not just title.By that I'm guessing they just mean another staple character and a solid game they can jump off which sounds awesome but I can't help but feel on edge about.

Or you could stop abandoning your existing franchises. F-Zero GX HD would be absolutely wonderful, even if it offers absolutely nothing new... and a new Star Fox game that actually plays like the first two without any stupid game-changing gimmicks or being an entirely different genre would be fantastic.

As an aside: if your new IP is hyper-sterile, uses too much of the color white, and generally looks like something we'd expect to contain Miis, fans will not think of it as a new franchise, but as an extension of Wii Sports, Wii Fit, etc. Go out of your way to avoid this, as it is one of the least appealing things you've been doing too much of lately.

So Nintendo wants a "New" property. I'm forced to point out that the last time they used the word "New" we got "New Super Mario Bros". Which was hardly "new" so much as a fresh coat of paint on a tried and true formula.

So if they're making a "New" game, will it be classic top down Zelda with the word "New" in front of it or classic 2D Metroid with the word "New" in front of it?

lol.

This is all just taking the piss of course. I don't hate Nintendo in the least. But it is fun to point out stuff like this.

I feel kind of bad for the guy. What is he, like 60 and he's still working on titles? Plus, I kind of feel like the whole "Nintendo needs new IP" thing is a bit unjustified when Ninty has made plenty of new games in the past few years. Does it matter if they don't use new characters if the game is so different that the characters are the only thing they have in common? Kirby's Mass Attack, Pokemon Conquest, Kid Icarus Uprising, etc. I guess it depends on what constitutes a "new franchise" but I wouldn't count Mario & Luigi or Luigi's Mansion as part of the main Mario franchise even if they take place in the same universe/use the same cast. Not saying this is a bad thing, or that new IP isn't worth looking forward to, but I guess I never understood what there was to get excited about with new IP.

Anyway, hopefully this'll be something along the scale of their big titles like Zelda, Metroid or Mario. Whatever it is

Much as they do rely on their core franchises quite a bit, at least the quality remained high. I'm curious if they can maintain their level of quality on a product they don't have as much practice producing. High hopes for success though.

First off, while I get the intended humour of the article, I think it's unfair to try and portray Nintendo as being unwilling to put out new IP. The most successful game on the Wii was a new IP: Wii Sports. They also put out other new IP like Endless Ocean and Xenoblade. The 3DS has played host to new IP like Pushmo, Crashmo, Dillon and Sakura Samurai. The thing is, none of those games sold anywhere near as much as Mario, so people like to pretend they don't exist.

Jokes aside, it's no secret that the house that Mario built is held up by some fairly consistent pillars. You have your Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, Donkey Kong and maybe a few others that rear their family friendly heads every few years.

See, but here's the thing... the last Metroid title was three years ago. And even then, that was just the last in a brief four game comeback which saw the Metroid series revived after skipping out an entire console generation. Donkey Kong hadn't been heard from for years before Retro brought him back with Donkey Kong Country Returns. Even Zelda is pretty conservative on instalment showings, given that Nintendo never puts out more than two instalments per platform.

They're important games, of course, but it's not as if Nintendo's entire history is just thrashing out those games again and again. They've always put out weirder, more leftfield stuff to try and win gamers over with. Earthbound. Chibi Robo. Eternal Darkness. Heck, even Brain Age, Nintendogs and Wii Sports could be argued as being leftfield successes that came out of nowhere.

As consistent as these franchises are however, some might also consider them to on the stagnant side as well. You can only stomp on so many Goomba before the experience starts to lose its touch.

"[Next spring] we'll have a general selection available, so I've been thinking it would be a good time to bring out a new franchise." When pressed for further details he would continue, "I can't say too much in detail right now, but I've been pretty busy with this title these days."

Now this I can get behind. Perhaps with excepting Wii Music, Miyamoto has shown he's still got the chops to make incredible games. He created the Pikmin series at the age most other developers would have already gotten long in the tooth, and Pikmin 3 is looking to be the best one yet. He's still got the probably the sharpest eye for game design in the industry, and if he's working on something original, I can only assume it's because the gameplay was so different it wasn't applicable to any of Nintendo's pre-existing franchises.

I remember there were reports in the news last year that he wanted to work on an FPS. Maybe that's what he's working on?

I figured this thread would be full of people sneering at the idea that Nintendo ever does anything "new".

I was right.

So I figured I'd just casually drop a list of games and franchises that Nintendo's either released on their console exclusively and/or at least marginally contributed to (even if it was just being in the publisher's seat) within the last decade or so. And just to make it hard, I didn't pick out any that were Mario, DK, Zelda, Kirby, Pokemon, or Metroid games.

....and I'm sure I've missed a bunch of 'em, but that's all I care to list. I think it makes my point well enough. Man, that crazy Nintendo. They never try anything new.

*eyeroll*

People, the notion that they don't "make a lot of new properties all the time" is pretty clearly not true. And even if you accept that notion as true (when we know it isn't), there's a simple answer as to why they spend so much time making games for their most popular franchises: a lot of the new material they make doesn't sell nearly as well or get nearly the same level of critical praise. If Activision stopped making Call of Duty tomorrow and started making more new IPs, some of us would be happy, but a great deal more people would be bitching about how they want more CoD and wouldn't buy those new games.

Simply put, you only sell what you know the customer will buy. A lot of folks who buy Nintendo consoles do it because they want to play games from those franchises. They're big unit-pushing franchises. Don't irrationally hate Nintendo for something that every other publisher does and would continue to do in the same situation.

Now I will say this, Nintendo does have one rather large flaw that IS worth bitching about: they're still REALLY bad at advertising their games. Hell, you probably didn't know most of these existed, so it's fairly understandable that you'd be uneducated about how many different things Nintendo has tried to bring in to differentiate their fleet of games. Nintendo really needs to work on advertising their products better, instead of just picking a few select games to brag about and not advertising the rest.

Covarr:Or you could stop abandoning your existing franchises. F-Zero GX HD would be absolutely wonderful, even if it offers absolutely nothing new... and a new Star Fox game that actually plays like the first two without any stupid game-changing gimmicks or being an entirely different genre would be fantastic.

They're not abandoning those franchises.

Miyamoto is on record as saying that he doesn't have any fancy new ideas for F-Zero and doesn't want to put out any game without trying to bring some new dimension to the table (and it'll be harder to nail a unique feel for F-Zero now that Mario Kart has started moving into that territory). I imagine Star Fox is in the same situation.

I've been lurking for a while, I just needed to comment on this article, because why is it that the "journalists" reference their own bullshit articles when they need to flame Nintendo, such as the 'console bricking update'. An overblown problem that was absolute bullshit. (I lost internet during the update, my console was not bricked), yet they don't reference their own articles which explain the shit like this. Just so they can use it as an excuse to give the same shit that they do in EVERY Nintendo article.

The gameplay of all 3 of these games are drastically different. 64 is the title that started to begin the whole 3D platforming genre, it was something that was only just beginning to get explored.

Sunshine changed the focus of jumping to having a focus on spraying water to clean up graffiti. Mario's primary means of defeating enemies changed from jumping on them to blasting them with water.

Galaxy switched the focus once again to being low gravity, and jumping around planets, being able to walk around spherical maps instead of being on a single flat one.

Galaxy 2 was mostly the same as Galaxy, however this wasn't due to wanting to rehash content. Galaxy 2 was originally intended to be an expansion pack for Galaxy, but it was later expanded into being an independent title.

The other Mario titles, such as Sports, Mario and Luigi, RPG etc only share one thing in common. The protagonists, everything else about the games are completely different from one another. Calling them all "the same games" is just the most retarded thing imaginable.

But god forbid any of you judge a GAME on its GAMEPLAY rather than on the story or the characters.

And I shouldn't even go anywhere near the possibility of asking anyone to judge a game on its own merits. None of you have EVER gone near that.

I'd really love some new platformers Nintendo, I wanna grab Dillon's game when I get abit of scratch. I've been playing the 'Ratchet and Clank' triology and I got some serious hankering for some old school platformers with bright, colourful characters and setting... something like Psychonauts, Tai the Tazmanian Tiger, Spyro the f*cking Dragon!

....and I'm sure I've missed a bunch of 'em, but that's all I care to list. I think it makes my point well enough. Man, that crazy Nintendo. They never try anything new.

*eyeroll*

And yet roughly half of those games you listed aren't developed by Nintendo themselves. Developing and publishing are 2 completely different things, and what Miyamoto is referring to is a brand new IP being developed exclusively by Nintendo. Yes, Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pokemon, etc. will always sell, but it wouldn't hurt to see them make a new IP here or there. Who knows what the new game they're working on will be like, but I trust it will be interesting.

roushutsu:And yet roughly half of those games you listed aren't developed by Nintendo themselves.

....

Let's take a moment to go back and read what I said prior to that list.

CriticKitten:.... a list of games and franchises that Nintendo's either released on their console exclusively and/or at least marginally contributed to (even if it was just being in the publisher's seat) within the last decade or so ....

Whoops.

Good job reading that post you quoted. But no, it was much more important to hurriedly dismiss my point as wrong even though you didn't actually read what I said.

Bravo. You get a gold star.

My point was that Nintendo has put forth plenty of effort to push out games that are unique and different from their own major franchise pillars. They've developed several and published several others. They produce plenty of unique content. The problem isn't that they don't make new things, it's that they never advertise it.

I can't say this really excites me at all. Nintendo has consistently proven over the last who knows how many years that they make solid games that just don't appeal to me at all. Kudos to Miyamoto and I hope whatever he is working on turns out well but if it's just abother Nintendo title (which, of course, it should be) then count me as not sold.

CriticKitten:I figured this thread would be full of people sneering at the idea that Nintendo ever does anything "new".

I was right.

So I figured I'd just casually drop a list of games and franchises that Nintendo's either released on their console exclusively and/or at least marginally contributed to (even if it was just being in the publisher's seat) within the last decade or so.

Usually the complaint is that Nintendo itself, as in Nintendo the developer, doesn't do much new. Listing a bunch of games that are only in some way associated with them doesn't really disprove that. If anything it gives the impression that Nintendo is fairly bad at coming up with new ideas, but is really good at paying other groups to do it for them.

Also, holy sequels batman. I'd give Bayonetta a pass since they were picked up after the first one, but you can still tell the old adage 'If it's worth doing once, it's worth pumping out as many as possible' is alive and well.